Where an Alibi is Not Everything (Kde alibi nestačí )

The middle one from a series of three detective stories (105 % Alibi, 1959; Alibi on the Lake, 1965) with a pair of protagonists Tůma-Líbal is focused on a very specific type of crime – pharmaceuticals. Fraudulent medicine is killing cardiacs with its ineffectiveness, money pours into the pockets of the guilty, but the investigators are struggling. The fact that seemingly everyone has a bulletproof alibi means one thing – someone is covering for the perpetrator. Tůma (Höger) and Líbal (Bek) follow the breadcrumb trail to a colorful array of characters, form unstable alliances and set traps in this timeless universal story about the dark side of the pharmaceutical industry. Besides a long list of by then already established actors, such as the protagonists Karel Höger and Josef Bek, known from a wide spectrum of genres, young Josef Abrhám appears here in a small secondary role, with his only acting credit at that time being the student film Ceiling by Věra Chytilová (1961). (bk)